Forward Deployed Engineer
US$120,000 – US$158,000 / yr base salary
Posted 13 Oct 2026
Advertised as “Forward Deployed Engineer, Federal (Onsite - Lexington Park, MD)”
BranchFactor Summary
The original posting with the fluff stripped out
- Expected experience
- 2+ yrs
- Management level
- Individual contributor
- Employment
- Remote
- Visa sponsorship
- Not offered
| Base salary | US$120,000 – US$158,000 / yr |
|---|
Study levelBachelor's
C3 AI (NYSE: AI), is the Enterprise AI application software company. C3 AI delivers a family of fully integrated products including the C3 Agentic AI Platform, an end-to-end platform for developing, deploying, and operating enterprise AI applications, C3 AI applications, a portfolio of industry-specific SaaS enterprise AI applications that enable the digital transformation of organizations globally, and C3 Generative AI, a suite of domain-specific generative AI offerings for the enterprise. Learn more at: C3 AI
C3 AI is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer, Federal (On-Site) to join our Federal team. In this role, you will be the on-site engineer responsible for a C3 AI Platform deployment running in a disconnected, on-premises environment at a secure government facility in Southern Maryland. Your primary focus is keeping the system available: monitoring its health, responding to incidents and outages, performing upgrades and patches, and building the automation and runbooks that keep problems from recurring. When operations are steady, you will support the customer’s applications on the platform through troubleshooting and evaluating potential enhancements. An ideal candidate is calm under pressure, comfortable debugging Linux and Kubernetes without internet access, and able to work directly with federal customers. This role requires U.S. citizenship, an active Secret clearance, and the ability to obtain additional program access. Responsibilities
- Operate and maintain the C3 AI Platform in the customer's disconnected, on-premises environment, maximizing uptime.
- Respond to incidents and outages: diagnose root cause, restore service, and document findings.
- Monitor system health and build alerting and automation to prevent recurrence.
- Plan and perform upgrades and patches using offline artifacts.
- When operations are steady, contribute to application development and enhancements, using your on-site proximity to the customer to gather feedback, understand use cases, and translate needs into requirements.
- Surface technical risks and work with product, engineering, and SRE teams to improve product quality.
- Occasionally travel to visit C3 AI offices or other customer sites.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in a STEM field or equivalent professional experience.
- Software development experience with JavaScript and Python.
- Experience with scripting or programming (Python or Bash preferred) to automate and monitor systems.
- Excellent problem-solving, critical thinking, and communication skills.